The question is;
"Describe an experiment that you would perform in order to show that the radiation from a particular source consisted of only beta particles."

Here is my thinking,

Place a sheet of paper, ~3mm of aluminium and a few cm of lead each 3cm apart from each other in a line directly in front of the source. Place GMT's in each of the gaps and one between the source on the paper. Accounting for background radiation, if the 2 GMT's; one between the source and the paper, the other between the paper and ~3mm of aluminium, are similar in counts and the GMT between ~3mm of aluminium and lead reads 0 counts (accounted for background radiation) then the source contains only beta particles.

This however doesn't seem right, if not can someone point me in the right direction or even a simpler experiment.

The question is;
"Describe an experiment that you would perform in order to show that the radiation from a particular source consisted of only beta particles."

Here is my thinking,

Place a sheet of paper, ~3mm of aluminium and a few cm of lead each 3cm apart from each other in a line directly in front of the source. Place GMT's in each of the gaps and one between the source on the paper. Accounting for background radiation, if the 2 GMT's; one between the source and the paper, the other between the paper and ~3mm of aluminium, are similar in counts and the GMT between ~3mm of aluminium and lead reads 0 counts (accounted for background radiation) then the source contains only beta particles.

This however doesn't seem right, if not can someone point me in the right direction or even a simpler experiment.

Thanks.

What's a GMT? It would seem to me that you could do this fairly easily with a bubble chamber as well.

-Dan

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